| |
| |
Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
This is a reduced-resolution page image for fast online browsing.
EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:
University Organizes 291 in military science and tactics began as soon as the university opened in 1868. The plans were formulated in a spirit of sincerity and earnestness and ever since instruction has been given continuously and the department built up in exactly the same spirit in which it was established. About this time, November, 1867, the opposition of M. L. Dunlap, a member of the board, to the policies of the regent and of the board of trustees began to develop. Of this opposition, which was serious in its consequences, J. M. Gregory wrote in his private journal. " I n the course of the fall an opposition began to show itself. M. L. Dunlap one of the trustees and a correspondent of the Chicago Tribune began to assail the plans of the University in his letters to the Tribune and to make personal assaults against my character and doings. These became shortly very bitter and malignant. They were thought to be caused by his disappointment in not receiving an official place in the university as superintendent or professor and his mortified vanity at not being consulted more and asked for his council." 26 In attributing to Dunlap disappointment at not receiving an official position as "professor or superintendent" Gregory was merely noting, apparently, some talk of the neighborhood. In view of the fact that Dunlap rejected years before a good business position in Chicago in order to take a family of growing boys to the farm, and again in 1860 had refused an offer of Abraham Lincoln to go to Washington as commissioner of agriculture it does not seem probable that he would have cared for or even accepted a position of the kind suggested in Gregory's journal.27 To get Dunlap's viewpoint one must look, briefly at least, to a few leading facts of his life and habits of thought. At that time he had already become a successful horticulturist; one who had used his own brain in the study of the evolution of problems of soil and climate and often had regretted that his own studies had not been of a sort to help him more in solving his practical problems. Of this he says in an article over the pseudonym "Rural" in the Chicago Tribune of December 26, 1867: "Born and reared on a farm, my schoolboy days given to the study of the common English branches, chemistry, mathematics, natural ^Abstract from journal of J. M. Gregory. "These facts based upon authority of his son.
| |
